The invention is generally directed to compositions and methods for separations and bioengineering.
Cellular isolation techniques are an essential component in studying specific populations, allowing for growth, genomic, and proteomic investigations. The detachment of cells adhered to any surface requires the application of a force that is greater in magnitude to that of adhesion. Fluid shear forces have been shown to be a simple method for cell detachment. Although this is a local and simple method of cell release, excessive exposure to fluid shear results in cell damage and reduction in viability. An alternative approach is to cleave the protein ligand that is bound to the capture surface using enzymes, such as trypsin. However, enzymatic exposure can cause morphological changes due to a disruption of the cell membrane and glycocalyx, leading to losses in cellular activity. Furthermore, enzymatic digestion has been shown to directly affect both the behavior and chemical makeup of the cells themselves.
These limitations illustrate the need to establish a general technique to capture and release biological materials, such as cells, without extensive physical or chemical perturbations to the cell environment. There remains a need for surfaces and gels that have high specificity for particular cells and that allow the release of captured cells without altering the behavior and makeup of the cells.
In addition to biological separation, there is a critical need for biological purification technologies that also demonstrate high recovery and yield. Current automation platforms have limited recovery due to inherent limitations of the chemical composition within their process reagents and/or inefficiencies in the process workflows. These limited recoveries and yields have greatly hindered the study of rare cells, proteins, and nucleic acids within heterogeneous tissue samples. The purification of these targeted moieties would allow the advancement of new therapies, new fundamental biological understandings, and development of personalized theranostics. Although there has been some work on automation technologies that have been implemented in current workflows in an attempt to increase the purification yield, there is a need for a low non-specific binding chemistry within automation components.